This invention relates generally to manipulating data in a computer network, and specifically to retrieving, presenting and manipulating embedded program objects in distributed hypermedia systems.
Computer networks are becoming increasingly popular as a medium for locating and accessing a wide range of data from locations all over the world. The most popular global network is the Internet with millions of computer systems connected to it. The Internet has become popular due to widely adopted standard protocols that allow a vast interconnection of computers and localized computer networks to communicate with each other. Computer systems connected to a network such as the Internet may be of varying types, e.g., mainframes, workstations, personal computers, etc. The computers are manufactured by different companies using proprietary hardware and operating systems and thus have incompatibilities in their instruction sets, busses, software, file formats and other aspects of their architecture and operating systems. Localized computer networks connected to the Internet may be incompatible with other computer systems and localized networks in terms of the physical layer of communication including the specific hardware used to implement the network. Also, different networks use differing, incompatible protocols for transferring information and are not able to communicate with each other without a translation mechanism such as a “gateway”.
The Internet provides a uniform and open standard for allowing various computers and networks to communicate with each other. For example, the Internet uses Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (“TCP/IP”) that defines a uniform packet-switched communication standard which is ultimately used in every transfer of information that takes place over the Internet.
Other Internet standards are the HyperText Transmission Protocol (“HTTP”) that allows hypertext documents to be exchanged freely among any computers connected to the Internet and HyperText Markup Language (“HTML”) that defines the way in which hypertext documents designate links to information. See, e.g., Berners-Lee, T. J., “The world-wide web,” Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 25 (1992).
A hypertext document is a document that allows a user to view a text document displayed on a display device connected to the user's computer and to access, retrieve and view other data objects that are linked to hypertext words or phrases in the hypertext document. In a hypertext document, the user may “click on,” or select, certain words or phrases in the text that specify a link to other documents, or data objects. In this way, the user is able to navigate easily among data objects. The data objects may be local to the user's computer system or remotely located over a network. An early hypertext system is Hypercard, by Apple Computer, Inc. Hypercard is a standalone system where the data objects are local to the user's system.
When a user selects a phrase in a hypertext document that has an associated link to another document, the linked document is retrieved and displayed on the user's display screen. This allows the user to obtain more information in an efficient and easy manner. This provides the user with a simple, intuitive and powerful way to “branch off” from a main document to learn more about topics of interest.
Objects may be text, images, sound files, video data, documents or other types of information that is presentable to a user of a computer system. When a document is primarily text and includes links to other data objects according to the hypertext format, the document is said to be a hypertext document. When graphics, sound, video or other media capable of being manipulated and presented in a computer system is used as the object linked to, the document is said to be a hypermedia document. A hypermedia document is similar to a hypertext document, except that the user is able to click on images, sound icons, video icons, etc., that link to other objects of various media types, such as additional graphics, sound, video, text, or hypermedia or hypertext documents.
FIG. 1 shows examples of hypertext and hypermedia documents and links associating data objects in the documents to other data objects. Hypermedia document 10 includes hypertext 20, an image icon at 22, a sound icon at 24 and more hypertext 26. FIG. 1 shows hypermedia document 10 substantially as it would appear on a user's display screen. The user is able to select, or “click” on icons and text on a display screen by using an input device, such as a mouse, in a manner well-known in the art.
When the user clicks on the phrase “hypermedia,” software running on the user's computer obtains the link associated with the phrase, symbolically shown by arrow 30, to access hypermedia document 14. Hypermedia document 14 is retrieved and displayed on the user's display screen. Thus, the user is presented with more information on the phrase “hypermedia.” The mechanism for specifying and locating a linked object such as hypermedia document 14 is an HTML “element” that includes an object address in the format of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL).
Similarly, additional hypertext 26 can be selected by the user to access hypertext document 12 via link 32 as shown in FIG. 1. If the user selects additional hypertext 26, then the text for hypertext document 12 is displayed on the user screen. Note that hypertext document 12, itself, has hypertext at 28. Thus, the user can click on the phrase “hypermedia” while viewing document 12 to access hypermedia document 14 in a manner similar to that discussed above.
Documents, and other data objects, can be referenced by many links from many different source documents. FIG. 1 shows document 14 serving as a target link for both documents 10 and 12. A distributed hypertext or hypermedia document typically has many links within it that specify many different data objects located in computers at different geographical locations connected by a network. Hypermedia document 10 includes image icon 22 with a link to image 16. One method of viewing images is to include an icon, or other indicator, within the text.
Typically, the indicator is a very small image and may be a scaled down version of the full image. The indicator may be shown embedded within the text when the text is displayed on the display screen. The user may select the indicator to obtain the full image. When the user clicks on image icon 22 browser software executing on the user's computer system retrieves the corresponding full image, e.g., a bit map, and displays it by using external software called a “viewer.” This results in the full image, represented by image 16, being displayed on the screen.
An example of a browser program is the National Center for Supercomputing Application's (NCSA) Mosaic software developed by the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, Ill. Another example is “Cello” available on the Internet at http://www.law.cornell.edu/. Many viewers exist that handle various file formats such as “.TIF,” “.GIF,” formats. When a browser program invokes a viewer program, the viewer is launched as a separate process. The view displays the full image in a separate “window” (in a windowing environment) or on a separate screen. This means that the browser program is no longer active while the viewer is active. By using indicators to act as place holders for full images that are retrieved and displayed only when a user selects the indicator, data traffic over the network is reduced. Also, since the retrieval and display of large images may require several seconds or more of transfer time the user does not have to wait to have images transferred that are of no interest to the user.
Returning to FIG. 1, another type of data object is a sound object shown as sound icon 24 within the hypermedia document. When the user selects sound icon 24, the user's computer accesses sound data shown symbolically by data file 40. The accessed sound data plays through a speaker or other audio device.
As discussed above, hypermedia documents allow a user to access different data objects. The objects may be text, images, sound files, video, additional documents, etc. As used in this specification, a data object is information capable of being retrieved and presented to a user of a computer system. Some data objects include executable code combined with data. An example of such a combination is a “self-extracting” data object that includes code to “unpack” or decompress data that has been compressed to make it smaller before transferring. When a browser retrieves an object such as a self-extracting data object the browser may allow the user to “launch” the self-extracting data object to automatically execute the unpacking instructions to expand the data object to its original size. Such a combination of executable code and data is limited in that the user can do no more than invoke the code to perform a singular function such as performing the self-extraction after which time the object is a standard data object.
Other existing approaches to embedding interactive program objects in documents include the Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) facility in Microsoft Windows, by Microsoft Corp., and OpenDoc, by Apple Computer, Inc. At least one shortcoming of these approaches is that neither is capable of allowing a user to access embedded interactive program objects in distributed hypermedia documents over networks.
FIG. 2 is an example of a computer network. In FIG. 2, computer systems are connected to Internet 100, although in practice Internet 100 may be replaced by any suitable computer network. In FIG. 2, a user 102 operates a small computer 104, such as a personal computer or a work station. The user's computer is equipped with various components, such as user input devices (mouse, trackball, keyboard, etc.), a display device (monitor, liquid crystal display (LCD), etc.), local storage (hard disk drive, etc.), and other components. Typically, small computer 104 is connected to a larger computer, such as server A at 106. The larger computer may have additional users and computer systems connected to it, such as computer 108 operated by user 110. Any group of computers may form a localized network. A localized network does not necessarily adopt the uniform protocols of the larger interconnecting network (i.e., Internet 100) and is more geographically constrained than the larger network. The localized network may connect to the larger network through a “gateway” or “node” implemented on, for example, a server.
Internet 100 connects other localized networks, such as server B at 120, which interconnects users 122, 124 and 126 and their respective computer systems to Internet 100. Internet 100 is made up of many interconnected computer systems and communication links. Communication links may be by hardwire, fiber optic cable, satellite or other radio wave propagation, etc. Data may move from server A to server B through any number of intermediate servers and communication links or other computers and data processing equipment not shown in FIG. 2 but symbolically represented by Internet 100.
A user at a workstation or personal computer need not connect to the Internet via a larger computer, such as server A or server B. This is shown, for example, by small computer 130 connected directly to Internet 100 as by a telephone modem or other link. Also, a server need not have users connected to it locally, as is shown by server C at 132 of FIG. 2. Many configurations of large and small computers are possible.
Typically, a computer on the Internet is characterized as either a “client” or “server” depending on the role that the computer is playing with respect to requesting information or providing information. Client computers are computers that typically request information from a server computer which provides the information. For this reason, servers are usually larger and faster machines that have access to many data files, programs, etc., in a large storage associated with the server. However, the role of a server may also be adopted by a smaller machine depending on the transaction. That is, user 110 may request information via their computer 108 from server A. At a later time, server A may make a request for information from computer 108. In the first case, where computer 108 issues a request for information from server A, computer 108 is a “client” making a request of information from server A. Server A may have the information in a storage device that is local to Server A or server A may have to make requests of other computer systems to obtain the information. User 110 may also request information via their computer 108 from a server, such as server B located at a remote geographical location on the Internet. However, user 110 may also request information from a computer, such as small computer 124, thus placing small computer 124 in the role of a “server.” For purposes of this specification, client and server computers are categorized in terms of their predominant role as either an information requestor or provider. Clients are generally information requestors, while servers are generally information providers.
Referring again to FIG. 1, data objects such as distributed hypermedia documents 10, 12 and 14, image 16 and sound data file 40, may be located at any of the computers shown in FIG. 2. Since these data objects may be linked to a document located on another computer the Internet allows for remote object linking.
For example, hypertext document 10 of FIG. 1 may be located at user 110's client computer 108. When user 110 makes a request by, for example, clicking on hypertext 20 (i.e., the phrase “hypermedia”), user 110's small client computer 108 processes links within hypertext document 10 to retrieve document 14. In this example, we assume that document 14 is stored at a remote location on server B. Thus, in this example, computer 108 issues a command that includes the address of document 14. This command is routed through server A and Internet 100 and eventually is received by server B. Server B processes the command and locates document 14 on its local storage. Server 14 then transfers a copy of the document back to client 108 via Internet 100 and server A. After client computer 108 receives document 14, it is displayed so that user 110 may view it.
Similarly, image object 16 and sound data file 40 may reside at any of the computers shown in FIG. 2. Assuming image object 16 resides on server C when user 110 clicks on image icon 22, client computer 108 generates a command to retrieve image object 16 to server C. Server C receives the command and transfers a copy of image object 16 to client computer 108. Alternatively, an object, such as sound data file 40, may reside on server A so that it is not necessary to traverse long distances via the Internet in order to retrieve the data object.
The Internet is said to provide an “open distributed hypermedia system.” It is an “open” system since Internet 100 implements a standard protocol that each of the connecting computer systems, 106, 130, 120, 132 and 134 must implement (TCP/IP). It is a “hypermedia” system because it is able to handle hypermedia documents as described above via standards such as the HTTP and HTML hypertext transmission and mark up standards, respectively. Further, it is a “distributed” system because data objects that are imbedded within a document may be located on many of the computer systems connected to the Internet. An example of an open distributed hypermedia system is the so-called “world-wide web” implemented on the Internet and discussed in papers such as the Berners-Lee reference given above.
The open distributed hypermedia system provided by the Internet allows users to easily access and retrieve different data objects located in remote geographic locations on the Internet. However, this open distributed hypermedia system as it currently exists has shortcomings in that today's large data objects are limited largely by bandwidth constraints in the various communication links in the Internet and localized networks, and by the limited processing power, or computing constraints, of small computer systems normally provided to most users. Large data objects are difficult to update at frame rates fast enough (e.g., 30 frames per second) to achieve smooth animation. Moreover, the processing power needed to perform the calculations to animate such images in real time does not exist on most workstations, not to mention personal computers. Today's browsers and viewers are not capable of performing the computation necessary to generate and render new views of these large data objects in real time.
For example, the Internet's open distributed hypermedia system allows users to view still images. These images are simple non-interactive two-dimensional images, similar to photographs. Much digital data available today exists in the form of high-resolution multi-dimensional image data (e.g., three dimensional images) which is viewed on a computer while allowing the user to perform real time viewing transformations on the data in order for the user to better understand the data.
An example of such type of data is in medical imaging where advanced scanning devices, such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Computed Tomography (CT), are widely used in the fields of medicine, quality assurance and meteorology to present physicians, technicians and meteorologists with large amounts of data in an efficient way. Because visualization of the data is the best way for a user to grasp the data's meaning, a variety of visualization techniques and real time computer graphics methods have been developed. However, these systems are bandwidth-intensive and compute-intensive and often require multiprocessor arrays and other specialized graphics hardware to carry them out in real time. Also, large amounts of secondary storage for data are required. The expense of these requirements has limited the ability of researchers to readily exchange findings since these larger computers required to store, present and manipulate images are not available to many of the researchers that need to have access to the data.
On the other hand, small client computers in the form of personal computers or workstations such as client computer 108 of FIG. 2 are generally available to a much larger number of researchers. Further, it is common for these smaller computers to be connected to the Internet. Thus, it is desirable to have a system that allows the accessing, display and manipulation of large amounts of data, especially image data, over the Internet to a small, and relatively cheap, client computer.
Due to the relatively low bandwidth of the Internet (as compared to today's large data objects) and the relatively small amount of processing power available at client computers, many valuable tasks performed by computers cannot be performed by users at client computers on the Internet. Also, while the present open distributed hypermedia system on the Internet allows users to locate and retrieve data objects it allows users very little, if any, interaction with these data objects. Users are limited to traditional hypertext and hypermedia forms of selecting linked data objects for retrieval and launching viewers or other forms of external software to have the data objects presented in a comprehensible way.
Thus, it is desirable to have a system that allows a user at a small client computer connected to the Internet to locate, retrieve and manipulate data objects when the data objects are bandwidth-intensive and compute-intensive. Further, it is desirable to allow a user to manipulate data objects in an interactive way to provide the user with a better understanding of information presented and to allow the user to accomplish a wider variety of tasks.